Why Can’t We Get Major Innovation in Air Travel?

In my job I travel by air several times by year.  Every time I am struck by how bad your experience is as a customer.  You have to arrive way before your flight, the queues at security are always long, and service personnel overworked and unfriendly.  Airports themselves are always depressing environments, the food outlets mediocre, the toilets filthy, etc., etc.  Then you find an impossibly small seat in an unhealthy pressured metal tube, where you try not to go mad if it is a long-haul flight, or stare out of the window if it is short-haul.  And then, when you arrive, they lose your bags, the ATMS are out of money, and the taxis doesn’t take foreign credit cards.  A caricature you say. Sure.  Business class is better than economy. And there are better airports and even airlines (though in my experience only Singapore Airlines is tolerable, the rest mediocre).  Perhaps you say it is just my choice of trip and carrier?  And haven’t we had innovations in air travel?  Business books never fail to mention Southwest (or its European clones).  And now we have electronic check-in, don’t we?

I would suggest that, while Southwest is a great business model innovation, it did not change the customer experience that much.  It simply made that experience cheaper and available to more people.  And as for electronic check-in I’m sceptical. I always find myself talking to a human being for some reason outside my control. Again we may have saved the air lines money, and us a few minutes, but the overall experience is only slightly better.  This is because electronic check-in is a piecemeal innovation within a larger system, a system that clearly stretched by the numbers of people using it.

The common view is the industry is unprofitable and therefore unlikely to see much investment to change this state of affairs.  This is a question of perspective.  Air travel is profitable for fuel companies, airports and governments.  It is just airlines that are unprofitable.   Why?  The main reason is that governments control the industry, in particular which airlines fly where, because they regard airlines as “strategic” or “national champions”.  I think both arguments may have made sense decades ago but are now thoroughly flawed.  However, the result is there is no real competition for the customer—on most of my trips I have a choice of two carriers, but sometimes only one. And there are many mediocre airlines essentially kept in business by their governments. Even within the USA, a supposedly free market, Chapter 11 is used to keep flawed airlines in business.

So government is the seeming hurdle to innovation in air travel?  They control the system, keeping the airlines tightly constrained, allowing other stakeholders to profit, and showing little inclination to address the obvious problems.  Again there are some exceptions, some governments being willing to invest in airports for example.  But you see few attempts to make significant changes to the system—the new airports are bigger, shinier and cleaner and more efficient at moving people, but the overall A-to-B experience is much the same.

But in most countries customers elect these governments, don’t they?  So I conclude the real problem is us.  We tolerate being treated badly and rationalize it away as out of our control or “what do you expect for the price”.  We should complain more, lobby more, point out the stupidities in the system, find out how our taxes get used to maintain the mess, etc., etc.  I suspect we won’t though.  Air travel has been mediocre for many years now and, apart from isolated examples of customer rage, there is little evidence of a customer movement for change.

A final thought.  Even if we—the customer—don’t push for it maybe there is fundamental change coming.   I speculate that business travel will not come back to previous levels when the global economy recovers.  Also video technologies will clearly continue to improve making business travel less necessary.    With the main profit driver for airlines dwindling, the many legacy carriers will either go out of business or have to raise prices.   Two things may then happen.  Customers will resist higher prices without a better experience and governments will increasingly find it hard to prop up the old regime.  Hopefully that will lead to a freer market and better attention to service as a driver of business.  Or am I dreaming?

Comments

[Trevor Holmes]

If we can agree that it is customer needs which can drive innovation, then your (if it is a commonly held view) diatribe against the airlines is a clear indicator of the huge potential of innovation opportunity that exists. The question perhaps is who can profit from and /or who is interested in answering these needs. Clearly airlines are not the only potential investors. ( they are far too busy striking, saving fuel or covering up huge losses:)
points to consider:
Increased check in times & security measures
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Let's face it if we leave innovation of flying to the airlines (and governments) then only the terrorists will be sponsors of change!

[Vanessa Ribeiro]

There is one airline though that is really working hard in terms of innovation: the Catalan airline Vueling. They are a low cost carrier, and they have innovated in several ways lately. Some actions I recall are:

Business presentations on innovation on board: they have partnered with Infonomia and gave business presentations on board to ther Executive passengers.

Facebook call for action: choose the city you wish to travel to and the member with more votes gets to travel to that destination for free.

Flight from Paris to Ibiza with in flight DJ David Guetta playing live

Vueling's airline magazine Ling is very cool and has a very innovative approach

I totally agree that after the flat bed advent, or the online check-in as well as the e-Ticket technology, most airlines out there have almost completely turned their backs to innovation and customer experience though.

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I totally agree that after the flat bed advent, or the online check-in as well as the e-Ticket technology, most airlines out there have almost completely turned their backs to innovation and customer experience though.

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